Touch technologies are commonly used as input devices for a variety of products. The usage of touch devices of various kinds is growing sharply due to the emergence of new mobile devices such as Personal Digital Assists (PDA). Tablet PCs and wireless flat panel display (FPD) screen displays. These new devices are usually not connected to standard keyboards, mice or like input devices, which are deemed to limit their mobility. Instead there is a tendency to use touch input technologies of one kind or another.
Some of the new mobile devices, such as the Tablet PC, are powerful computer tools. Devices such as the Tablet PC use a stylus based input device, and use of the Tablet PC as a computing tool is dependent on the capabilities of the stylus input device. The input devices have the accuracy to support handwriting recognition and full mouse emulation, for example hovering, right click, etc. Manufacturers and designers of these new mobile devices have determined that the stylus input system can be based on various electromagnetic technologies, which can satisfy the high performance requirements of the computer tools in terms of resolution, fast update rate, and mouse functionality.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,690,156 entitled “Physical Object Location Apparatus and Method and a Platform using the same” and US Patent Publication No. 20040095333 entitled “Transparent Digitizer” both of which are assigned to N-trig Ltd., the contents of both which are hereby incorporated by reference, describe an electromagnetic method for locating physical objects on a FPD and a digitizer that can be incorporated into the active display screen of an electronic device.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,791,536, entitled “Simulating Gestures of a Pointing Device using a Stylus and Providing Feedback Thereto, assigned to Microsoft Corporation, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference, describes a system and method for simulating a gestures using a stylus and choosing an action to be performed in response to the stylus gesture.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 20040155871 entitled “Touch detection for a digitizer” assigned to N-trig, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference, describes capacitive methods for touch detection. The capacitive touch detection methods allow finger and touch detection using the same detector and sensor.
US Patent Publication No. 20050275638, entitled “Dynamic Feedback for Gestures”, assigned to Microsoft Corporation, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference, describes stylus gesture feedback techniques to provide feedback to users concerning the recognition of a stylus gesture.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20060012580, entitled “Automatic switching for a dual mode digitizer” assigned to N-Trig, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference, describes a method and apparatus for switching between different types of user interactions and appropriately utilizing different types of user interactions, e.g. electromagnetic stylus and touch, in a digitizer system. A user may initiate switching, e.g. switching from a stylus to a touch user interaction, by performing a defined touch gesture. A user may initiate switching, e.g. switching from a stylus to a touch user interaction, by performing a defined touch gesture.
US Patent Publication No. 20060026536, entitled “Gestures for touch sensitive input devices”, assigned to Apple Computer, Inc., the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference, describes a method and system for processing touch gestures that cause actions to be performed and providing user feedback regarding recognized touch gesture.